There was a time—not so long ago—when I caught myself withholding an expression of love. Not because it wasn’t there, swelling behind the ribcage like tides behind the moon. But because I feared what it meant to fully give. To fully be that love.

To be love is to risk being misunderstood, to risk seeing your offering met with silence or absence. And so, sometimes, we clip our own wings. Voluntarily. In the name of protection, self-control, or some ancient fear dressed in the armor of logic.

But in that withholding, I learned something powerful:
That the yearning, the ache, the pull to give—to radiate, to pour out devotion and care and magic into the spaces we inhabit—does not come from lack.

It comes from abundance.
From the soul’s innocent, infinite desire to leave any energy it touches more luminous than it was before.

Even in the ruins of confusion, even in the wake of perceived loss, there lives a seed of resurrection. Of renewal. That’s why love feels so radical. It’s not neediness—it’s creative force. The same kind of force that builds stars and gives rhythm to the galaxies.

But here’s where we sometimes fall: when the desire to love becomes the rule, the vision, the story we must fulfill at all costs. When love shifts from gift to goal. When we measure the success of the connection by its longevity instead of the evolution it catalyzed.

The soul never asks us to chain love. Only to channel it.

Just as shoes want to last, and they do—if we care for them—we must realize that relationships, like tools, like gardens, want to be maintained. Watered. Understood. But not overwatered. Soil can drown just as hearts can. It needs balance. Presence. Space.

And sometimes the best thing you can give something—or someone—you care for is the patience of the void.
Because from the cosmic dance of light and dark, hot and cold, sun and moon, story emerges.
Creation emerges.
Everything you treasure needs that same rhythm to rise.

Imagine a world with no night? With no pause? With no space between breaths?
That isn’t harmony. That’s burnout dressed as devotion.

We don’t fall for people because we’re broken. We fall because we remember.
They reflect back something eternal. They awaken something sleeping.
And sometimes—yes—love can become a performance, a weapon, a mask. When we love to feel needed, to play the hero, to be the answer. But beneath that? Still innocence. Still that raw, untamed longing to uplift what we touch.

But true love doesn’t need to be the savior. It only needs to be true.
Uncloaked. Without expectation. Without keeping score.

The lovers who understand this—who feel no fear in your evolution, who dance with your changes like wind with bamboo—those are the sacred ones.
The keepers. The catalysts.
The ones who make your roots dig deeper, and your reach stretch higher, year after year.

So when you’re alone, in a season of pause, of quiet soil…
ask yourself: what kind of gardener are you becoming?
Do you know your own soil yet? Its pet peeves and preferences, what it craves under moonlight, what excites it at sunrise?

And if you’re dreaming of apples, don’t just wish.
Mend the earth.
Relearn the watering.
Let the space do its holy work.

Because real freedom is being loved in every version you evolve into.
And real love never fears the seasons. It prepares for them, honors them, and trusts the bloom to come.

Even from the ashes.

Especially from the ashes.